Papercranes
by Bloody Angels
Summary: The paper cranes have always been a part of her life and perhaps, they always will be -complete


So, this is my attempt at the topic 'Papercranes'. Hope you like it!

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto**

* * *

_They say a thousand cranes make your wish come true..._

* * *

The first time Tenten hears about the thousand paper cranes, she is a mere five year old.

One of the care-takers of the orphanage reads out a book to the small huddle of children gathered around her. Tenten does not join them at first, because she is set out to be a ninja whereas the rest of the children are the future civilians, and she does not have time to sit around idly for some stupid story.

However, the words 'thousand cranes' and 'wish come true' catches her attention and the care-taker only smiles as the little girl joins the rest of the kids, intently hanging on to the bigger woman's every word.

Later that day, Tenten invests all of her weekly-pocket-money savings on a bundle of colourful papers and a book on origami without a second thought. Returning to the orphanage, she deliberately ignores all the other kids' ogling stares and stations herself into her favourite corner of the common room.

After several failed attempts, she finally gets the hang of it and her cranes actually start to look like cranes.

Determined, she sets out to make her thousand paper cranes, wondering if she would finally be able to get that shiny kunai she'd eyed in the shop window down the street.

A month later, she watches her orphanage burn down along with her 717 paper cranes collected in empty jars.

* * *

She is reminded of the cranes years later, when Lee tries (unsuccessfully) to make a paper flower for 'beautiful Sakura-san'.

Laughing, the young kunoichi takes the crumpled up paper from her team mate's hand, smoothes it out, and tries her hand in making a flower. Her hands work on their own, doing a routine of folding of the paper, and Tenten, along with both her team mates, thinks it's going to turn into a flower.

So Lee is genuinely surprised when the paper takes a form of a crane instead. Tenten is too. She hadn't known she could still make cranes anymore due to her lack of practice.

Neji simply snorts and asks her _'which new species of flower is that?' _He then snatches the crane out of her hands and unfolds it, and then folds it in a pattern once more.

The young brunette blinks in surprise when Neji hands her a paper flower - crumpled from all the tryings before, yes, but a flower nonetheless - while Lee bursts into a series of ramblings about how Neji was hiding his youthful talents as a youthful origami master and _'would his eternal rival teach him the arts of origami?'_

That evening, she spends a small amount of her savings on a bundle of colourful papers once more.

Tenten critically eyes the colourful papers and shakes her head while murmuring something along the lines of Lee's stupidity getting to her.

However, she gives in to the temptation, no matter how childish. Flopping on her bed, she pulls the bundle towards her and carefully folds the papers one after another, in a pattern she had learned so long ago; a pattern that's etched in both her mind and her heart.

At first, she manages about 50 paper cranes in just one sitting which causes her legs to fall asleep, and for her to fumble around aimlessly until feeling came back into her legs.

She makes a few everyday after that and it soon turns into a habit that she can't seem to break out of, not that she tries.

But she's a shinobi, and shinobies don't have time to idly sit around playing with papers. Duty calls, and the young weapons mistress' three hundred-something paper cranes sit forgotten inside a few jars at the bottom of her closet.

* * *

Konan is what reminds Tenten of the paper cranes once again. Or rather, her paper technique is.

Tenten has her fair share of Akatsuki knowledge. After nearly suffocating to her death in Kisame's water-prison, Tenten makes it her mission to obtain all information they have on the Akatsuki members so she can be better prepared to face them the next time.

But though she takes in Konan's unique talent, there is only a slight stir in her mind.

It is only when she sees the female Akatsuki's paper flower that she remembers her own forgotten paper cranes.

Later, when she's not busy helping rebuild Konoha after it's destruction, or when she's not away on some few missions, she takes out her jars and fills them up more with new paper cranes.

Nobody knows about this.

She is considered the most mature and sensible among the females of Konoha 11, and she prefers to keep it that way; because wishing on a bunch of paper cranes is as stupid and as childish as wishing on shooting stars or something like that.

Nobody but Lee and Neji know about her habit, not even Gai-sensei. And though her fascination with paper cranes is a common knowledge between the three, no one mentions it.

Why should her habit be a concern for anyone anyway?

But of course, Konoha is rebuilt and missions are in demand once again.

Tenten never finishes her 1000 cranes because she's too busy either taking or saving 1000 lives.

* * *

War falls on the head of the 5 nations like a storm cloud.

Though every shinobi has been prepared for something like this, everyone feels the gloom because that is what war does to people.

Civilians are evacuated to a much safer place; countless meetings are held between the shinobi leaders; countless battle strategies are put forth; countless are approved, countless are dismissed.

Tenten has never felt anything stronger than dislike for anyone in her whole life; not even Pein, for whom she felt only pity and sadness, but as she is polishing her precious arsenal to perfection, she can't help but feel a surge of strong hate towards the enemy.

She eyes the numerous glass jars standing beside her nightstand. The jars are full of colourful papers; all folded to resemble cranes.

Tenten doesn't complete her 1000 cranes because she dumps all her 819 cranes into the dumpster.

This isn't the time for it, she thinks to herself as she watches the cranes tumble out of the jar and into the bin. This isn't the time for foolish wishes.

Lining the empty jars neatly next to her nightstand, Tenten puts away her arsenal and gives the jars one last look before exiting her apartment to give her hand in anything and anywhere she can.

* * *

On the day of the war, Tenten makes her way towards their training grounds. They're super early because Gai-sensei wants a word with the three of them. Some words of wisdom before parting, maybe?

Tenten arrives on Team Gai's training field to see Neji meditating beneath his favourite tree. He is alone, only the two market bags lying beside him serving as company.

He doesn't open his eyes as she approaches. He doesn't even acknowledge her presence but Tenten knows that he knows that she's here. He can sense her from a mile away; that's how strong their bond is.

Instead, he continues sitting motionlessly while she brings out a small collection of pointy things and starts throwing them with perfect accuracy on her favourite target board that is only inches above his head.

He opens his eyes the moment her last kunai etches itself on the target board with a distinct _thunk_. He doesn't dust his robes as he stands up because while every blade of grass and every bit of mud seem to stick to Tenten the moment she sits down, not even the dew can make it to Neji's Hyuuga robes; it's as though the materials of the clothes repel imperfection.

Picking up the bags, Neji approaches Tenten with long, purposeful strides and stops when she's less than a feet away.

He hands out the bags to her and for a second, the corners of his mouth lift upward in a small smile.

_What's this?_ she asks him in slight confusion and curiosity.

_A gift,_ he replies. _Take it_.

_What's in it?_ she asks again as she takes the bags from him.

_My hand in your hobby,_ he says.

Tenten peers inside one of the bags to find several glass jars, all shaded in different shades of blue.

She looks up in astonishment at her team-mate.

_Neji?_ she asks timidly. _What is this?_

_Cranes,_ he voices. _I had some free time._

_Why give it to me, then?_

_Because I made them for you. You like paper cranes, right?_

_Yes._

_Good._

_Neji?_

_Yes?_

_Thank you._

_No problem._

She gives him a bright smile and then asks him to wait while she rushes back to her apartment to drop off her presents. She removes her previous empty jars and stuffs them inside her closet so that her new gifts can take their place beside her nightstand.

She lines all of the jars side by side, according to the numbers that Neji has taken trouble of painting on the jar lids. Some are slightly taller than others, some are a shade darker than others, but all of them hold numerous carefully folded paper cranes.

With a slight smile on her face, Tenten exits her apartment and once again makes her way back to her training grounds. Lee and Gai-sensei are already here by now and the older of the two dramatically chides Tenten for her tardiness.

Tenten apologises insincerely and Gai-sensei accepts her 'heartfelt' apology with a teary hug, while Lee tries to keep his own tears at bay but to no avail. Soon, the two Green Beasts of Konoha are hugging and crying over each other in front of a sunset with waves splashing in the background.

As they do this, both Lee and Gai-sensei miss the small smile exchange between the other two s_aner_ members of Team Gai.

* * *

Tenten lies on her back amidst the battlefield. The shinobies fighting around her, both allies and enemies, don't give her a second thought because they think she's dead.

And she almost is, too.

Wielding the Bashosen has drained her out of energy and almost out of chakra; a second more and she would've died from the hands of the weapon she wielded so skilfully.

The thought agitates Tenten; dissatisfies her.

As someone who is known as the renowned Weapon Mistress from the Land of Fire, she doesn't like the fact that she could not control the weapon.

In the eyes of many, she was the most suited to wield something as strange and powerful as that. Anyone who saw her using it would say she looked beautiful, powerful and deadly; like an Angel carrying the weapon of destruction. In their eyes, they saw nothing but skill.

But in Tenten's own mind, she is weak.

Training with anything lethal from an early age, she feels at home with anything sharp, pointy and dangerous. She has honed her skill to almost perfection (almost, because there is no such thing as perfection. It does not exist anywhere but in the flawed minds and imaginations of power-lusted shinobies); has learned to throw, wield, toss, heave, pitch, fling, chuck every kind of weapon imaginable; has learned to be a Queen among the steels that will comply to all her wishes, whether it be to maim a body or save a life. She has not ever come across a weapon she cannot control over in time.

Until now.

Though she wielded the weapon perfectly, it left her with almost no life. Her joy in finding a new and powerful weapon is overridden by the weakness she feels as she lays on the dirt of the battlefield.

Her thoughts and self-pity (though she never does it, she allows herself to dwell on it just this once) are disturbed when a flock of black birds fly overhead.

Neji's face instantly comes to her mind and for a moment, Tenten completely forgets about her surroundings. All she can see and remember is that tiny smile her team-mate gave her when he handed her his hard work: the thousand paper cranes.

Tenten silently vows to finish making her own thousand paper cranes after returning home; after the war is over.

Taking a brief moment to pray to whatever god is out there (she's never believed in gods but makes it an exception just this once because when she had been escorting the civilians to a safer location, she'd overheard a small group of children praying for their toys and she thinks maybe she should give the god they believe in a chance) for her team's safety (for she knows that lives are lost in wars and she's not naive to pray for everyone to come out well; just her team is good for her), she gathers up her strength and once again joins the bloodlust of the battlefield.

* * *

Tenten regains consciousness after a week long coma in the hospital beds of the Konoha and meets her sensei's solemn gaze.

When she asks what's wrong and he tells her, she almost thinks she's still in coma and this is all just a dream; just a dream, because Neji cannot be dead. He cannot be dead; he's Hyuuga Neji; destiny-blabbing-blackbirds-counting-smug-bastard- with-a-stick-shoved-up-his-ass _the_ Hyuuga Neji, and him dying is just impossible.

She argues with herself, saying that this is just her mind playing a sick joke on her; that she is still unconsciousness and her mind is doing whatever it can to make her suffer after the horrors of the war.

And, for a moment, she almost believes herself.

But her bubble is burst when she sees her sensei's grave demeanour. Truth pierces her like a thousand kunais at once and she clutches her head in her hands, her eyes going wide as her body wills itself into a fetal position.

She doesn't talk to anyone after that, doesn't act like she's aware of the world going on around her. She eats only after the Godaime barges into the room and forces her into it; she doesn't hear Naruto's pleas of forgiveness, or sees Hinata's stream of tears; she doesn't notice the look of hopelessness in Naruto's eyes, or the one of heartbreak in her team's. She appears dead even though the machines around her show otherwise.

The minute she is released, she bolts from the hospital, still clad in a hospital gown. She runs blindly because she doesn't know where to go.

Is she to go to his grave? No, she doesn't want to see where he is buried right now; she is in no condition. What about the Hyuuga mansion? Negative. Seeing all the people who resemble him would kill her and what is the use of getting out of the hospital if she's only going to die right after? Their training ground? No, the memories still too fresh. So where?

Tenten comes out of her reverie when her feet stop in front of her apartment door.

Her door is still locked by her chakra, so she knows no one has been here in the time she was in the hospital.

She enters the home she hasn't been in for a while. Everything looks the same, if not a bit dusty from the lack of usage. She doesn't know what to do, so she starts cleaning up her apartment, dusting and washing and cleaning up everything. But an hour is too fast for her to finish and she is left once again with no clue as to what to do next.

Finally, she sums up enough courage and enters her bedroom; the room she had been steadily avoiding since she set foot inside her apartment.

The first thing that her sight falls upon, past the neatly made bed, still closed closet and slightly dusty study desk where she kept her weapons scrolls and stacks of pictures, are the glass jars lined neatly beside her nightstand.

Tenten sits in front of the jar and stares at it blankly. She then swallows her emotions and fears and, taking a deep breath, opens the slightly dusty jar labelled #1. She turns the jar upside down and out tumbles all the paper cranes. Tenten doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry when she sees that the paper cranes have numbers carefully written on them too.

What she doesn't expect, is the small slip of paper that tumbles out with the cranes. Picking it up curiously, Tenten turns the paper over to find the words 'Open them all', written in Neji's beautiful cursive, staring up at her.

The kunoichi picks up the first crane labelled '1' and unfolds it gently, careful not to tear it in any way. What she finds inside shocks her, for it is not what she expects. Heart racing, the brunette unfolds the other paper cranes, not really caring about the way she does it or their sequence.

And every single one of those cranes contains the same words over and over again.

"I love you, Tenten."

Tears stream down her face as shaking hands open the next jar and the next and the next, unfolding all the paper cranes and reading them, until she comes to the last jar. The minute she dumps all the jar's contents on the floor, she notices one paper crane that is a slightly different in colour than the rest. She saves it for the last and opens the remaining cranes. Blurry vision marks her eye as the tears refuse to stop. She reads them all, every single one of them, even though she knows they all hold the same sentence.

She wills her tears to stop as she reaches the last paper crane because somehow, she knows it is going to hold something special. When her traitorous tears refuse to stop, she bolts to her bathroom and continuously splashes her face with water until she can't figure out whether the liquid on her face is water or her salty tears.

Tenten lifts her head to the mirror to see her tear-stained reflection staring back at her. She takes deep breaths and tries to calm herself. When she is sure she won't burst into tears once more at the sight of the paper cranes, she marches back to her bedroom and sits down once more.

She reaches down for the last paper crane that is cream-coloured, instead of the normal brown like the rest of the paper cranes, and finds it to be a bit heavy, as though something is inside it. Tenten takes another deep breath before unfolding it.

The first thing immediately noticeable is the platinum ring tumbling out of the crane. Tenten gasps as she catches it and stares at it in shock. Her eyes travel back to the now open paper crane and she finds that instead of the "I love you, Tenten", this paper crane holds more words than she's ever imagined.

It's his, _Neji's_, letter to her.

She doesn't know how many times she wipes her eyes in order to get through the letter, and by the time she is done, she is a mess. She sobs and hiccups uncontrollably and curls into a fetal position on her bedroom floor as she feels millions of kunais stabbing her heart mercilessly.

* * *

When Gai-sensei stops by her apartment later, he finds her asleep on the floor, her face stained with dried tears and her hands wrapped around her waist. He notices the numerous crumpled up papers lying around her.

Gai gives a deep, sad sigh and bends to pick his student up. As he does so, he notices a paper clutched tightly in one of her hands and when he sees his deceased student's handwriting in it, he respectfully averts his gaze and lays Tenten on her bed.

Tucking her in, Gai looks at his sleeping flower and prays silently for her heart and her youth. Leaning in, the older shinobi brushes a kiss on her forehead and treads his way back outside her apartment. As he closes the door behind him, the beautiful Green Beast of Konoha gazes heaven ward and sends his prayer to his prodigy student.

As he is walking away, Maito Gai feels more aged than he has ever felt.

* * *

Rain splatters the grounds of Konoha as the storm clouds roll overhead. People on the streets retreat back into their homes to shelter themselves from the assault of the weather and the ones too busy to go back home try their best to avoid getting hit by open umbrellas.

Tenten avoids all this by opting to travel through the roofs of the houses. She doesn't run, instead taking to walk towards her destination in a leisurely pace. She shifts her umbrella into her other hand as she tightens her grip on her backpack. She doesn't wear her normal outfit because she is still on leave; she dons a simple everyday clothes that makes it hard for people to identify her as a shinobi from afar.

When she almost loses her footing on one of the slippery roofs, she silently acknowledges the fact that she's getting out of shape and out of practise.

She hasn't been away on a mission for who knows how long (actually, that's a lie. It's been approximately two months and 5 days) because the Hokage had declared Tenten to go on a break. Not that there was anything Tenten could do about it.

Sure, she still trains; and she makes sure that everyone knows it (after all, who can ignore a quarter of the village's Forest of Death being destroyed on a weekly basis?), but training and going to missions are two very different things. And Tenten longs for a mission.

But, shaking those thoughts aside, Tenten makes her way towards her destination running on roof tops. When roofs to run across run out, Tenten swiftly jumps to the ground. She's here.

Clutching her bag pack tightly, she takes a deep breath and walks in through the cemetery gates.

She doesn't need to wonder where he is buried; she knows it by heart even though she hasn't been here since his death. She knows he isn't buried in the Hyuuga burial ground because his body lies under the grounds dedicated to the heroes of Konoha.

She makes her way towards him, only the splattering of the rain accompanying her. When she reaches him, she kneels in front of his grave stone and gives it a small smile.

_Neji_, her lips form, but she doesn't say anything.

She stays there for who knows how long without speaking a word. When it's time for her to go, she calmly takes glass jars filled with paper cranes out of her bag pack, places them on his grave, kisses his gravestone, stands up, and then walks away.

By the time she reaches the cemetery gates, the sky is cleared and the sun is beaming down at her.

* * *

_Neji,_

_Did you know that a thousand paper cranes grant you one wish? I did. You probably did too. I don't know about your wish, but I'll tell you what I wished for._

_You._

_I wished for you because I want you. I need you._

_I know I may sound weak when I say so, but it's time I let the truth go free regardless of what it may make me look like because at this moment, I don't care. I don't care about whether it makes me look strong or weak; I don't care about what people think of me and what I think of them; I don't care about the fact that I haven't been on a mission for the last two months or the fact that I gone shopping for fresh vegetables since we got back from war._

_All I care about is you. All I care about is getting you back._

_I need you, Neji. I need you because I don't have anyone to train with anymore. I need you because I alone cannot balance out the sanity of our crazy team. I need you because Naruto still apologises every time he sees me or Lee or Gai-sensei. I need you because I can't face Hinata, or any other Hyuuga, without wanting to break down._

_But more importantly, I need you because yes, I _will_ marry you._

_I love you, Neji. Always have, always will._

* * *

_...So she wished for the impossible._

* * *

**a/n:** So... tada! haha, man that's a lot of line breaks. Anyway, lemme know what you think. It's not beta-ed, but I'm looking for one! Drop a line if you're interested :)


End file.
